Russian Hospitals

So I promised a Russian hospital story right? Well over Christmas break my friend flew down to Turkey to visit some friends. While he was there he happened to be bitten by a cat. Weird right? Well by the time he got back to Russia the bite had turned into an infection and he had to go to the hospital to fix it.

First let me describe the American procedure to this problem. Walk in, talk to the doctor, receive quick treatment and antibiotics, then live. Form what I understand from my friend this was not an overnight problem.

Ok so here is what really happened. He went to the hospital and was treated. This involved slicing open the wound and draining it, then applying some antibiotics (this doesn’t really affect the story but in case you wanted to know …). As it turns out, a blood infection earns you a two week stay at the hospital, that’s right two weeks, no less. So my friend found himself in a ward with a couple other Russian men, all in for various things, although I believe they were related. My friend spent 9 days here until our teachers finally convinced the hospital to let him leave. It actually took the doctor ordering the hospital to let him leave, they were really bent on the 2 weeks.

During those two weeks my friend received daily injections of something (he wasn’t quite sure), two shots right in the butt, which is apparently pretty painful. Other than that his stay was pretty boring. Every week the nurses would “sterilize the room.” This involved them wheeling in a big ultra violet projector and basically irradiating the room clean. Whether or not this actually works, I don’t know. What I do know is that the en in the room are simply asked to cover their eyes for the ten or so minutes they are doing this. Needless to say my friend was conveniently absent from the room the next time they did this.

Something I found pretty interesting from the whole story was the room dynamics between all the guys. They really get to know each other and become good friends. My friend said that they would frequently raid the hospital store and cook up some home made “spirits”(i.e. rubbing alcohol). They also managed to smuggle in some vodka often enough.

My friend got out of the hospital a few days before classes started, and was plenty thankful to be out. Of course it’s funny to talk about it now, but he would definitely never want to go through that again. This brings me to another funny point in that a few weeks later he got another infection, this time a staff infection, in his arm, possibly from the Russian hospital? We may never know, but this time he happen to be in Moscow when the infection got bad again and got to use the Western hospitals available there.

Pretty crazy right? Basically I try not to think about the hospitals here, it’s just easier that way.